Two-Day MFA: Fiction Writing Workshop

Writing can be a solitary and frustrating endeavor. It’s one reason many writers enroll in M.F.A. creative writing programs: to be part of a vibrant literary scene. Of course, not everyone can drop everything to pursue a multi-year M.F.A. This workshop is designed to give you a concentrated version of the close reading and community you might find in a creative writing graduate program. Over the weekend, we’ll engage in intense, extended discussions of each writer’s story (or novel chapter), offering thorough and thoughtful feedback as a way of challenging each other and ourselves. By the end of our workshop, you’ll have made connections with fellow writers that may continue beyond your time in Iowa, so you can continue to be inspired by one another’s work.

Writers should be prepared to electronically share one short story––or a self-contained novel chapter or excerpt––before the weekend begins, so we can launch our critiques and conversations right away. This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists at all levels of experience.

Malinda McCollum’s short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Epoch, and elsewhere and have been anthologized in The Worst Years of Your Life and The Paris Review Book of People with Problems. She has been the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Plimpton Prize, and a Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing. She graduated from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has since taught at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, and The University of Iowa. She currently teaches writing at the College of Charleston, in Charleston, South Carolina.